2005 SF Mac Expo (photo story)

A candid shot of a man waiting at the PDX terminal that I took while I was waiting to fly to see Apple Computer's new tech toys at the 2005 San Francisco Mac Expo. He seems to be waiting for something else.

Once in SF I spent far more time waiting to get to the expo on the Mission Street bus than I did at the PDX terminal. On the Mission Street bus most of the passengers are also waiting for something other than news about new techno toys.

In addition to announcing that "Life is random" Apple has announced that "Random is the new order." In other words, you can't select the song you want to hear next on the mini iPod shuffle, but this isn't a bug it's a feature.

How big is the iPod shuffle? Shortly after Steve Jobs's Keynote Jennifer Berger, a senior editor at MacWorld magazine, and a member of the audience show you how big. Ms. Berger expects the new iPod shuffle to dominate the mini mp3 player market. Everybody will want to get random.

Apple has more catch phrases for the iPod shuffle. These include: "Give chance a chance" and "Enjoy uncertainty." However, for many people outside the expo life is so random and inequitable that it would be most enjoyable if this device could capture that randomness and keep it safely locked up in its thin white plastic shell.

Raines Cohen, co-founder of BMUG (the most influential Mac User Group) and formerly the chief technical analyst for the seminal MacWeek magazine mentioned that this is the 20th SF Mac Expo and he's been to all of them. He feels crushed by the weight of all of those expos and he wants to talk about the Stone Soup Society rather than the iPod shuffle. He heats up a cauldron of water in the wilderness, tosses a stone in and makes soup from the stone and whatever else society members and strangers contribute. What a hearty way to make your soup random!

I took very few pictures on opening day at the expo because I was busy passing out about 700 flyers for my If Monks had Macs CDROM. Monks comes with a device that I might have called "If Thoreau had an iPod." It is leaning against a book on the left edge of the desk.

However, the i-Thoreau (not its real name) does not open to a random passage from Thoreau's 2 million word journal. Thoreau believed that each week was its own season and my device opens to reflect Thoreau's best description of this week's season.

This was taken as I departed from the expo on the Mission bus with a more or less random group of men. However, as any programmer will tell you, randomness is an illusion that masks one or more necessary conditions.